Groups seek solutions to slow demise of loggerhead turtles

Published 12:00 am, Sunday, December 14, 2008

For the hard-to-buy-for folks on your Christmas list, skip the bath salts, the light-up novelty socks and the ever-so-impersonal gift card. Why not consider adopting an endangered sea turtle?

There's no worry about care and feeding, no messy cleanup, and the best part is you'll be doing a favor for a critter that's been having a pretty hard time.

In the past 18 months, about 1,000 loggerhead turtles have perished after getting hooked by bottom longline fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, according to government data supplied by Oceana, a nonprofit group focused on healthy oceans.

That's about eight times the federally authorized capture limit for the entire Gulf fishery.

"What's happened is the loggerhead sea turtles tend to feed and forage in the areas in and around the reefs, which are the same areas where some target species of fish - snappers and groupers - also tend to forage," said Dave Allison, senior campaign director for Oceana. "There aren't a lot of areas where turtles share foraging ground with fish, but where they do it appears it is pretty difficult to convince the turtles not to be feeding on the bait (used by bottom longline fishermen)."

Loggerhead turtles swim the temperate and subtropical waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, feeding on mollusks and crustaceans.

The migratory loggerheads travel extensively between nesting and foraging grounds and occasionally can be seen in Texas coastal waters and beaches.

The loggerhead has a large head and powerful jaws capable of crushing hardshell prey such as whelks and conch.

They also enjoy horseshoe crabs and sea urchins.

Squid, another sea turtle treat, could be their downfall.

Turtles attracted by squid-baited hooks are getting hung up in longline fishing gear deep in the ocean.

This is a problem for the creatures, which must rise to the surface for air.

"Every 45 minutes they have to come up for air," Allison said. "Of course if one is caught on a baited hook on the ocean floor for 10 to 12 hours, the turtle drowns."

Elizabeth Griffin, a marine wildlife scientist for Oceana, said one theory is that changing the bait could help.

While loggerheads might nibble at fish bait, they might not be as likely to gulp down the whole thing as they do with squid.

Griffin recently attended a public meeting in Florida concerning the loggerhead's plight.

At the meeting environmental groups, commercial and recreational fishermen and other interested parties met to share their views on the problem.

"It was a good dialogue; a good exchange of information," Griffin said, adding that "there was a real willingness" for fishermen and the environmental community to work together on the issue.

Fishermen were motivated to make changes because it does not financially benefit them to catch turtles on their lines. But perhaps an even stronger motivation was the possibility of having access to the Gulf fishery limited or shut down.

The first meeting was to give everyone the opportunity to speak their minds.

A second gathering, to be held sometime before the end of January, will focus more on brainstorming solutions.

Allison said the most likely outcomes of the turtle dilemma would be to impose new regulations on bottom longline fishing that would protect turtles from capture or to close or severely limit access to the fisheries.